g Baron Cuvier's Historical Eloge of 



necessary for transmitting them intelligence, was the only de- 

 lay which their restoration to hberty experienced. When 

 the seas were shut up against us, they opened at his voice for 

 our scientific expeditions. Geography and Natural History are 

 indebted to him for the preservation of precious labours ; and, 

 without him, our public collections would still, at the present 

 day, and perhaps for ever, have been deprived of a part of the 

 riches which adorn them. It will, without doubt, be admit- 

 ted, that the benefit accruing to science from services like these, 

 is fully equivalent to that resulting from the authorship of 

 books ; and if, in this discourse, it is principally the acknow- 

 ledgment due to noble actions that we have to express, it is not 

 too much to augur of our hearers, that this feeling will not be 

 less intensely participated by them, than that of admiration for 

 great discoveries would have been. 



Sir Joseph Banks, Knight Baronet, Counsellor of State to 

 the King of England, Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, 

 President of the Royal Society of London, and Foreign Asso- 

 ciate of the Academy of Science of the Institute of France, was 

 born in London, in Argyle Street, on the 13th February 1743. 

 His father'*s name was William Banks Hodgenkson, and his 

 mother"*s Marianne Bate. Some trace the origin of his family 

 to one Simon Banks, a Swede, who settled in Yorkshire in the 

 time of Edward HI., and who would have been the eighteenth 

 progenitor of Sir Joseph. Others say that his family came 

 from Sweden only a century before, and had seen but two 

 generations in England. It appears that Sir Joseph's grand- 

 father practised medicine in Lincolnshire, and that the suc- 

 cess which he met with in his profession, afforded him the means 

 of acquiring a pretty large fortune. Having risen to considerable 

 importance in the county, he was invested, in 1736, with the 

 office of Sheriff, and sat in one or two Parhaments as represen- 

 tative of the town of Peterborough. 



Joseph Banks, like the greater number of young English- 

 men born in easy circumstances, after having been confided 

 for some time to the care of a clergyman, was sent to a public 

 seminary. His parents at first made choice of that of Harrow, 

 near London, from whence they removed him to Christ's Col- 



